Swear words in Yiddish in Russian transcription. Stop using swear words

The latest phrasebook, including 2000 words and expressions necessary for everyday communication in a wide variety of situations. The accompanying discs contain expressions accompanied by Russian translation and explanations.

The proposed phrasebook will provide you with a supply of the most common words and phrases. A minimum knowledge of Hebrew will make your stay in the country easier and much more enjoyable.

The words and phrases included in the phrasebook are grouped into thematic sections.

Good morning from in Hebrew

We continue to introduce you to morning greetings in different languages, and today we invite you to wish each other good morning in Hebrew: בוקר טוב (boker tov)!

Threatening, defamatory, pornographic; Insult other commenters, authors and heroes of materials; Use obscene language and insults in any form, regardless of who

Entertaining Hebrew

I would like to devote our next meeting with Hebrew to the boundaries of what can be learned by peering into the graceful outlines of Hebrew letters. The depth of Hebrew. So, let's dive in!

So, the largest components are DAM (blood) and the letter ALEPH. ALEPH is the first letter, the numerical value is 1. The unit can only denote the Creator. If we take a closer look at the writing of this letter (and this is another method of analysis), we will see that it consists of 3 components: diagonally - VAB, above and below it along the IUD.

Profanity in Hebrew

The husband of one of my colleagues was the owner of a tiny factory for packing nuts. All her relatives worked at this factory, and therefore this giant of Israeli industry was rocked by continuous squabbles and labor conflicts. My colleague's wife's name was Armand, but the colleague herself called him Mando. The trade union leader, constantly rousing the proletarians of the nut packaging factory to fight against capitalist exploitation, was the mother of the factory owner.

Insults in Hebrew

Not everyone realizes that “fuck you.” ” means the wish for the soul to be reborn in a new body, and “I had intercourse with your mother” means “I am your possible father.”

Swearing and curses, as well as greetings, are the oldest layer of language, a relic of primitive magic. The curser's task is to cause culture shock in the cursed person. Therefore, in all languages, curses belong to the realm of taboo vocabulary.

Terrible" Jewish curse?

In Hebrew, the word "goy" means "people." The Torah also uses it in relation to the Jewish people; for example: “I will make you (Abraham) a great nation (le hoi gadol) and I will bless you and make your name great” (Bereishit 12:2); “Who is he, such a great people (goy gadol) with such fair laws and statutes!” (Devarim 4:8). Nevertheless, more often this word is used to designate other nations, not the sons of Israel: “The Most High people (goy) will rise up against you from afar, from the ends of the earth” (Devarim 28:49).

Forum Bore - free communication about everything.

And Groys gesheft zolstu hobm mit shoyre; vos do host zol men ba dir nit fragn, un vos me fragt zolstu nit hobm - So that you have a large store, but so that they do not buy goods that are available, but ask for those that are not.

A shtroy dir in oig una a shpan dir in oyer, zolst nit visn vos frier arojstsutsien - A straw in your eye and a sliver in your ear and so that you don’t know what to take out first

Hundert Heiser

Shalom Aleichem: 9 useful sites and applications for learning Hebrew and Yiddish

By downloading this free application to your phone, you can watch 20 entry-level video lessons in English. Each lesson lasts from 3 to 7 minutes. The first six of them go into detail about the alphabet, and the rest help you understand the days of the week, counting, and how to say “thank you” and “please” in Hebrew. This application can also be recommended to those who are planning to go to Israel for a short time as a tourist - with its help you will definitely be able to easily remember the most important words.

Many of you would like to swear masterfully in Yiddish

When Mark Twain said: “Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated,” he could well have been saying it in Yiddish. Yiddish continues to be called a “dead” language for several centuries, and yet you will not go far to find people speaking it in any part of the World, including South Africa and Tokyo.

In New York, London, Paris, Buenos Aires, Jerusalem and countless other villages and towns you will hear Jews chatting, jabbering, filtering the market, soaring turnips to each other, joking, discussing unimaginable philosophical delights, washing bones, spanking their children and , of course, arguing in their native language. Listen here, and you will come across endless borrowings from Yiddish, which have even crept into English and Russian. Call someone a shmuck, a nudnik, a kibbitzer or potz, trash, shlimazel - you speak pure Yiddish! Naturally, such a free language with such chutzpah is not going to die or move to universities. Of course, if you are a goy or an assimilated Jew, you may not know what chutzpah is.

Okay - then this is your first Yiddish lesson.

Goy- this is a non-Jew, if a young man (employee, boss, president), then Shaigetz, and if a girl (wife, mistress, mother-in-law), then shiksa. By the way, sometimes secular Jews are thrown their yarmulkes - “You’re just like a goy.” But this is already chutzpah- that is, impudence. And if you went into a restaurant with a wolfhound, saying that this is a guide dog, this is also chutzpah.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a goy or a Jew, you will probably be interested to know that Yiddish words have entered the modern English language, and in all areas from show business to judicial practice. For example, in the U.S. Supreme Court records in 1980 alone, the word “chutzpah” appears 101 times, and the word “schmok” is mentioned 59 times, most often in the following statements by defense counsel: My client admits that he is a shmok, but, Your Honor...

Smack- literary meaning - gem. Shlimazla can be pitied. You can laugh at him, but shmok is a clinic of the highest level. This is a diagnosis. This is a certificate. It can safely be attributed to the description of primary male dignity, and, moreover, commensurate with the stupidity of the object, a respectable profile.

If we are already talking about shlimazzles and shmokas, then we cannot ignore other representatives of this worthy cohort of insane and clinical idiots in the Jewish language.

The Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow, and God knows they are all in use. The Jews, on the other hand, are carrying a whole cart, and with it more than one trainload of concepts to describe human stupidity. And what's funny is that many of these words begin with the letter "sh"... So why, you ask, did the Jews come up with so many words for different types of fools?... We leave it to you, dear reader, to think about it...

Shlemil- a fool, a simpleton, "will not only buy the Brooklyn Bridge, but will also offer to buy two for the price of one."

Shli"mazel- klutz, brake. When a schlemiel drops a bowl of soup, it always ends up on the schlemazle.

Shlimazzle and shlemil are walking down the street. Birdie. Shlimazel on the shoulder. He asks the shlemil:
- Sorry, don’t you have a piece of paper?
- Why do you need it? After all, the bird has already flown far away...

Schmegege- the same as shlemiel, but smaller. And smaller than a smack in an intimate matter.

Katz arrives from a convention and sees his wife in bed with another man. He shouts indignantly: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!!”
“You see,” the wife says to the man who is with her, “I told you that he’s just a shmegege.”

Schmendrick- the name of a character from the opera by Avrom Goldfaden, the founder of the Jewish theater, means the same as shlemil, but thinner and weaker... Also used by ladies to disparage a man’s sexual potential. So, in addition to the song “Rozhinkes mit Mandlen (Raisins with almonds),” Goldfaden introduced a lot of anatomical concepts into the Hebrew language.

Shmekele- diminutive of shmok. In every way.

Yiddish is still alive today, but it has become more difficult to catch the subtle nuances of the many colorful words and expressions that were an integral part of the vocabulary of our grandparents, who uttered them every day at work, at home, when they stepped in a puddle or when they stumbled.

This is a great opportunity not to rummage around and look for these concepts in dictionaries - especially since it is absolutely useless, but just listen to what we have to say.

And we will simply tell you, our reader,: Zezt tseh avek in hot a mekhaye! (Sit down and enjoy!)

And may the Hebrew language, lively and rich, accompany you for 120 years of your life!

And let everyone who says that there is no such language
Vaksn vi a tsibele, mitn kop in der erd!
(It grows like an onion, with its head in the ground!)

For dessert, an incident that recently occurred in the Parliament of the Government General of Canada. Reform MP Lee Morrison said at a meeting of the lower house that a government minister uses his powers with a great deal of chutzpah. And although this word has been part of spoken English in Canada for several decades, the respected MP Morrison pronounced it with an error.

Canada's Deputy Prime Minister Herb Gray, fortunately, turned out to be Jewish. Hearing an error in the pronunciation of his native word, he became very excited, jumped to his feet and offered Deputy Morrison a choice of a few more words that could characterize the deputy’s question - also in Yiddish.

Mr. Speaker, said Gray, if the honorable member of our Assembly wishes to continue to ask the same reasonable questions, I can offer two words that will more accurately characterize them, and all the questions of the Reform Party. Their questions are hornisht(nothing) and complete narishkeit(stupidity).

And although it is very doubtful that Gray's colleagues in the Liberal Party understood his emotions, some of them exclaimed "attention! attention!", thus expressing support for the speaker.

I ask for silence,” the speaker made Solomon’s decision. - I have no means to check whether these expressions are parliamentary.

This always happens. You are talking to someone who spoke Yiddish as a child, and he, from his point of view, aptly dismisses your common detractor with the help of his favorite Yiddish epithet. You are, of course, asking what this could mean...

For the next half hour, you can watch how your friend fights with windmills, drives away crocodiles, noks and runs, jumping on the spot and trying to give you at least an approximate description of the word he just used.

After that, he throws his hands up and, with well-known additions, says: “Well... This cannot be translated!”

The very fact that Yiddish has produced such an incredible number of precise and very vivid epithets and characteristics to describe human vices and virtues deserves our attention.

Take at least a word poc(in the English version the word mensch is given as an example - a good person). If you follow the literary translation, it's just...

However, the poet is quite literary. One of the grammar teachers spoke about my essay: “host gemakht a POTSevate arbet”... poc- klutz, potz - slow, potz - just a person who was not liked at first sight... Americans say that the word "pennis" in no way can accommodate all this diversity.

Balebuste- hostess. Strong woman. “And if my hands are like this, then I don’t care where your strimle is.”

Stark- strong, when, when moving, you need to lower a piano from the 13th floor, and the elevator does not work, a friend would be useful to you. Respectively:

Stark Via Ferd- strong as a bull (literally, like a horse). I’ve never seen it used in “bed” mode, but, for sure, it’s possible, it goes there too
Ge"zint- healthy, and
Ge "zint vi a ferd- healthy as a horse (or like a horse).

"Haver(female birth - "haverte) - boyfriend/girlfriend. Not to be confused with fraint/frayn"dine- young man/girl. It is interesting that despite the Semitic origin, the havera was used for the potsa of the Communist Party in the Union, and the frainta for the rest (including in the States).

Mench(mensch) - dude, man, hero, excellent student, well done, “I’ll answer for the market,” “I’ll be a bitch.”

A "yidisher kop- Jewish head. Not in the sense of kucheryave un kudlate, but in the sense of a person who has everything in order with this head.

When answering a business call, saying “Wha,” “Yeah,” and “What the fuck” has become old-fashioned. In the dictionary of an intelligent person there is the right word: “I will listen.” If a neologism is forgotten in fright, it can be replaced with the phrase: “Who needs me? ”, pronounced with Moscow Art Theater drama.

There is a wonderful phrase for unwanted questions that ask for an immediate answer “and you are * bet”: “What sadness are you, sir? "

A whole series of idiomatic expressions like: “fuck you” or “well, don’t you give a damn?” ” is replaced by the phrase: “It hurts to hear,” pronounced with Shakespearean tragedy.

During the exchange of opinions, the argument “I’ll throw your mother into the scoreboard”, according to the rules of educated people, must be replaced with the expression: “Dear fellow, don’t bother yourself looking for profanity.”

Addressing a colleague: “Masha, eight coffees without sugar with cream and cognac in the third meeting room, run” is now incorrect. You need to ask for a favor like this: “Dear young lady, won’t it be a burden for you? » and further in the text.

If you have to express your attitude towards a colleague’s point of view, which is not entirely compatible with the concepts of decency and morality, the modern dictionary suggests, for example, instead of: “you’re a dirty fag, but” use: “Oh, and you’re a cheat , scoundrel! »

“Fuck, you will answer for the market! " - "I am beyond the reach of your daring

arguments and deductions."

“Take off the handbrake, you are a rare braker” - “You’re just a routine worker, my dear! »

“Did you understand what you said, you fucker? " - "Your words, dear, are pure burlesque. Just like you, you are an accident of our time.”

Addressing a friend during a protracted presentation: “Isn’t it time for us to fuck off? ” is reflected in the phrase: “How do you find this buffoonery? »

And, finally, common expressions of delight in a story about a new employee next door: “Such an ass (legs, chest)! ” are translated into modern times as follows: “Personally, I am exalted by her invention.”

Blonde with bust - Blonde busty lady.

Instead of “well, I got drunk yesterday...” - “Oh, it’s nice to dance in circles with good people.”

Instead of “Well, you’re stupid…” - “My friend, I just saw pig brains in a butcher’s shop, very similar to yours.”

Who was Pushkin - an intellectual or not? And Bunin? What about the various intelligentsia? And in creativity they used strong words, and in life - from memories (in their male company, to give a certain color to their communication). And now - Tatyana Tolstaya, Dmitry Bykov - I name the first ones that came to mind, you can argue with these names, Dmitry Bykov published the newspaper “Mother”, which is famous in this language. “Orlusha,” the poet Alexei Orlov, about whom they write that they are waiting for his new poems, just as his contemporaries were waiting for new poems by Pushkin, writes precisely obscene poems, I have his book, it was sold tightly sealed, with a sticker “For children under 16.”

And there are force majeure situations that even the most refined intellectual cannot withstand (there is, of course, a minority who would never, under any circumstances). And jokes - salty in their own company - may “require” a strong word.

The creative intelligentsia now also loves it when they are able to “masterfully” use obscene vocabulary; they find a special relish in this, again, frontierism. Look how many fans Sergei Shnurov - Shnur - has, and he is a specialist in this area.

Curses in Yiddish

A goy is a non-Jew, if a young man (employee, boss, president), then a Shaige, and if a girl (wife, lover, mother-in-law), then a shiksa. By the way, sometimes secular Jews are thrown their yarmulkes - “You’re just like a goy.” But this is already chutzpah - that is, impudence. And if you went into a restaurant with a wolfhound, saying that this is a guide dog, this is also chutzpah.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a goy or a Jew, you will probably be interested to know that Yiddish words have entered the modern English language, and in all areas from show business to judicial practice. For example, in the U.S. Supreme Court records in 1980 alone, the word “chutzpah” appears 101 times, and the word “schmok” is mentioned 59 times, most often in the following statements by defense counsel: My client admits that he is a schmok, but, Your Honor…

Shmok - literary meaning - precious stone. Shlimazla can be pitied. You can laugh at him, but shmok is a clinic of the highest level. This is a diagnosis. This is a certificate. It can safely be attributed to the description of primary male dignity, and, moreover, commensurate with the stupidity of the object, a respectable profile.

If we are already talking about shlimazzles and shmokas, then we cannot ignore other representatives of this worthy cohort of insane and clinical idiots in the Jewish language.

The Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow, and God knows they are all in use. The Jews, on the other hand, are carrying a whole cart, and with it more than one trainload of concepts to describe human stupidity. And what’s funny is that many of these words begin with the letter “sh”... So why, you ask, did the Jews come up with so many words for different types of fools?... We leave you, dear reader, to think about it...

Shlomil is a fool, a simpleton, “he will not only buy the Brooklyn Bridge, but will also offer to buy two for the price of one.”

Shli'mazel is a klutz, a slowdown. When a schlemiel drops a bowl of soup, it always ends up on the schlemazle.

Shlimazzle and shlemil are walking down the street. Birdie. Shlimazel on the shoulder. He asks the shlemil:

Sorry, don't you have a piece of paper?

Why do you need it? After all, the bird has already flown far away...

Shmegege - the same as shlemiel, but smaller. And smaller than a smack in an intimate matter.

Katz arrives from a convention and sees his wife in bed with another man. He shouts indignantly: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!!”

“You see,” the wife says to the man who is with her, “I told you that he’s just a shmegege.”

Schmendrik - the name of a character from the opera by Avrom Goldfaden, the founder of the Jewish theater, means the same as shlemil, but thinner and weaker... Also used by ladies to disparage a man’s sexual potential. So, in addition to the song “Rozhinkes mit mandlen (Raisins with almonds),” Goldfaden introduced a lot of anatomical concepts into the Hebrew language.

Shmekele is a diminutive of shmok. In every way.

Curses in Hebrew

Does anyone know how they swear in Israel?

Zone, sharmuta - fallen woman, nudnik - bore. Maybe some phrases like “God damn it”

correct “Lekh kebenimAt” (emphasis on the last syllable)

sharmuta - definitely Arabic

and “ben zona” is Hebrew (lit. “son of a prostitute”)))

lekh tizdaen / lehi tizdaini - something like “fuck off” (correct translation)))

Ben Kalba - son of a bitch

dafuk - fool

A fool is more like a "metumtam". Possible options are mephager (literally “backward”), satum (stupid:))))

MORE ABOUT THAT JEWS HAVE BELOW THE BELT
Stories about the Hebrew language with digressions

Among the letters that came after the publication of the chapter “WHAT JEWS HAVE BELOW THE BELT” from my linguistic essay “HOW THE JEWS CAME FROM THE SLAVS” I would like to quote a letter from Mikhail Libman from the Israeli city of Givat Zeev near Jerusalem.

“I warn you, I am not a linguist or a Yiddishist. In connection with my scientific studies I had to deal with texts in medieval German (Mittlehochdeutch). Quite by accident I came across the word fotze (or futze). Its meaning is the female genital organ (vulva) (Matthias Lexers Mittlehochdeutcher Tashen-worterbuch. Leipzig, Hirfel 1956, 5. 296). In modern German, Fotze is an obscene curse (the same thing, but has the obscene connotation of M.D.).

Could it have happened that, having passed into Yiddish, the word not only changed its first letter, but also its gender meaning to the opposite? It seems that the mutation of one letter into another (I don’t remember the scientific term) is observed in other languages?

Type your cut contents here. I’ll add that the quite decent akhits in steam locomotive is a “softened” version of the rough a chits in potz.”
Finally, the medieval word swanz means, among other things, member (M.Lexer, 5.220). The modern spelling of the word is Schwanz, not Schwanz.
… Your articles give me great pleasure.”

“We will not examine here any shmok or pots that are well known to many Russians and especially Israelis or Americans. Let’s just answer a frequently asked question: what’s the difference between them? If used in the literal sense, then no, but if they call a person, then shmok can be said about oneself, for example: “In this position, I felt like a real shmok.” You can only say potz about someone for whom you don’t have the slightest sympathy, just like the Russian asshole), nor the Hebrew zonev - literally tail, or the German Schwanz, which has the same meaning.

Although the ironic meaning of the surname of the hero of Ilya Ehrenburg’s most Jewish novel, “The Life of Laizik Royshvanets,” meaning “red tail” in Hebrew, which brought the hero so much trouble, eludes the modern Russian reader. But even Ehrenburg, who did not speak Yiddish, like many of his readers who grew up in the neighborhood of Yiddish-speaking Jews, understood the piquant ambiguity without explanation.”

I admit: in order not to go into details, I slightly changed the pronunciation of the word - Schwanz, although I knew that it was not Schwanz, as in the name of the hero of the novel by Ilya Ehrenburg. However, I decided to shorten the explanation, believing that most of my readers no longer know this word. Next time I will be more precise. I’ll also admit: I’m not a Yiddishist either, and where can you find them today, these legendary Yiddishists, who not only know the Hebrew language well, but also have solid scientific training, and are eager to write in Russian. Although many of the best modern Yiddishists who came out from under the wing of Aaron Vergelis and promote Yiddish in the most prestigious Western universities know Russian. While the West was menacingly cursing the USSR in general, the Yevsection and anti-Zionist Soviet Jewish figures in particular, and the writer and editor of Sovetish Gameland Aaron Vergelis in particular, he managed to do what professional Jews could not do anywhere in the West. Vergelis raised a whole galaxy of wonderful and creative Yiddishists, managed to provide them not only with a creative environment and support, but also with income.

In the work “A New Word about Yiddish, or How the Jews Descended from the Slavs,” he deliberately avoided the question of the etymology of the words pots and shmok, since this analysis would lead away from the stated topic about the powerful formative Slavic substratum of the Jewish language. However, since the conversation has started, it is interesting to understand this issue. I know several versions of the etymology of the words shmok and pots. The word shmok is purely Yiddish, and has nothing in common with the German Schmuck, meaning jewelry. Therefore, in modern American language, the completely respectable Jewish surname Shmukler, meaning jeweler, sounds rather ambiguous. This is approximately what the equally venerable Jewish surname Trachtenberg, which was borne by respected rabbinical dynasties, sounds like in Russian today. Trachtenberg comes from the Hebrew trachtn and means to think, reflect.

EXIT ONE: FUCK

I would like to dwell in more detail on the Russian word “fuck”, since here we can restore the process of the birth of words. I had the opportunity to meet with the poet and translator Mikhail Nikolaevich Ivanov, who was responsible for spreading the word “fuck”. It is thanks to Ivanov that the old meaning of “knocking hard” has long become obsolete, and the first thing that comes to mind is a sexual act.

Somewhere in the early 1980s, Ivanov and a friend drank too much and hoisted a red flag at a beer stall. For such an offense, Ivanov was expelled from the Maurice Thorez Institute of Foreign Languages. Ivanov, who knew English, became a simultaneous interpreter in the industry of pirated video films, which was taking its first sprouts in the USSR. According to his work book, he was listed either as a watchman or as an auxiliary worker. Millions of Russians are probably familiar with the dispassionate, “afterlife” voice of Ivanov, who provided simultaneous interpretation for thousands and thousands of foreign videos in the 1980s. And he was faced with the hypocrisy of the “decent” Russian language, in which it is impossible to speak decently about the most everyday things. The language of American cinema of the 70s and 80s was replete with the word fuck in all sorts of combinations. Fuck literally means to knock, and Ivanov, according to his own story, without hesitation translated it as “to fuck.” The word filled the empty niche and went for a walk through Russian cities and villages. For a long time now, no one in Russia has asserted, like the legendary Soviet-era figure who told a foreign correspondent, that “we don’t have sex.” However, the word “fuck” itself acquired an obscene connotation.

I left the USSR in the long-ago 70s and the sexual meaning of the word “fuck” was unknown to me until the arrival of a large wave of emigration from the USSR in the 90s. Probably, Ivanov really widely popularized this meaning, but it was already in circulation somewhere in the late 70s. The “National Corpus of the Russian Language” points to Gladilin’s story “Big Running Day” (1971-1981), published in exile, where this word appears. And in “The Young Scoundrel” (1985) by Eduard Limonov, written in exile, this word is used in its modern meaning.

Through the cinema and language of super-popular Jewish comedians like Jackie Mason, Lenny Bruce or Seinfeld, “Brooklyn” films about the New York mafia, where the best Jewish roles are played by Italians, the word smuck (in English it is pronounced smuck, a vowel, a middle sound between a and o) became very popular in America. It is not possible to trace the etymology of the word shmok in as much detail as “to fuck.” One version says that here we are talking about the imitative diminutive prefix shmoo (shmo in dialects), which the Jews used to imitate.

In Russian there is a well-known anecdotal expression: “a shmoomer died, if only he was healthy.” Another catchphrase of the first head of the Israeli government is “um-shmoom.” In this case, UM is the Hebrew acronym for the UN, and the dismissive um-shmoom has been the policy formula for Israel for 60 years, which has a record of violating the decisions of the United Nations.

The smack presumably came from a rod-stick. The diminutive (in scientific language this is called deminitive) from shtok – shtokele, stick, later turned into shtokele-shmokele. In children's language this is the equivalent of Russian pipiska. When a small children's shtokele becomes a full-blown shtokle, then a small shmokele becomes an abusive or devalued shmokele. The rule of usage (at least in American New York language) is that “where there’s a fuck, there’s a smack.” Where you can use an English word in English, you can also use a Hebrew word in the entire rich spectrum of derived lexemes that the English language knows. The only exception is that the words shmok and pots are not used in an offensively homophobic sense.

SECOND RETREAT: FEIGIN, FEIGLIN AND THE HOMOSEXUALIST

In Hebrew, a homosexual is called by the tender word feigle, feigele - a small bird. Although the rabbis also use the Talmudic tuma, which means a hermaphrodite, for whom it is not clear which mitzvot of the Lord he should fulfill - those for men or those for women. Although in all the sources available to me, the homosexual feigel is considered an American invention, I heard it in this meaning from the 90-year-old Unale, an Odessa thief in law, who lived out his life in one of the nursing homes in the south of Israel. Unale also remembered Mishka Yaponchik and expressed himself in the rich Yiddish of the Odessa Bindyuzhniks, whom we know only from a very tamed literary version created by Babel.

Unale studied at a public school founded by the grandfather of “Jewish literature” Mendele Moikher-Sforim, from which many colorful personalities emerged, such as Yakov Blumkin. He memorized entire passages from Sholom Aleichem and sometimes illustrated his life stories with quotes. From him I learned about the Jewish roots of many Russian words in my then language - “lokh” - from the Jewish proverb lokh in kop - a hole in the head, or even “cool chick”. I didn’t believe it, and you won’t find this word in popular Yiddish dictionaries. I didn’t believe it because the word was unfamiliar to educated people who knew Yiddish from their youth from books from the Jewish libraries of the Kultur-League or the Committee of the Jewish Poor. Only much later did I become convinced that Unale was right, when I found in Sholom Aleichem’s novel “Stempenyu” a phrase in klezmer slang kleve eldovka, which the American translator expressed in the slang of black musicians “Righteous chick”.
The Hebrew Feigl is a relative of the German Vogel (bird). Even the name is derived from him - Feiga, probably an analogue of the biblical battle Tziporah, the wife of the prophet Moses, who circumcised her husband in order to save him from the wrath of God. This name was once very popular, as evidenced by the widespread surnames Feiglin, Feigelson or Feigin.

Here it would be time to write another digression about Jewish surnames, otherwise one day I accidentally came across the reasoning of a certain clever woman on some forum that they were all anti-Semites, and if there was no water in the tap, then the anti-Semites also drank. She reasoned with her interlocutors that the British are proud that they are not anti-Semites, because they do not consider themselves stupider than the Jews, but... even Dickens brought out such a disgusting Feigin, and, therefore, is also an anti-Semite. True, Feigin possesses some Jewish traits and gestures only in the film “Oliver Twist,” based on the Broadway musical, where the Jews are really in charge. There he is a cheerful and handsome swindler, while Dickens's Fagin is a truly disgusting guy who corrupts minors. However, Dickens' Fagin is not a Jew at all, but an Irishman. And no anti-Semitism can compare with the prejudice and hatred of the Irish in the English-speaking world in the “enlightened” 19th century. In America they were even called “white blacks.” In the Dublin telephone book, entire pages are occupied by the surname Feigin, as well as by another “Jewish” surname Malkin. I even knew one Jew who, thanks to his “Irish” surname Feigin, was hired for a good job at a Saudi airline, which does not hire Jews.

All these digressions can lead far away from the Jewish feigele “bird”, which, along with ingele “angel”, was used by sentimental Jewish mothers to call their children.

Professor Gennady Esterkin gives another meaning of “bird”. In the Yiddish bureaucracy of the 20s and 30s, this was what they called... a bird, a V icon, which was used to mark the desired item in documents. This meaning of the word “bird” does not appear in pre-revolutionary Russian dictionaries. Then they marked it with a cross, or rather with the letter X (Xer in the old alphabet) so that the word was clearly from the Soviet period. It is difficult to say who borrowed from whom, Yiddish from Russian or Russian from Yiddish. I'm leaning towards the latter. In the Soviet institutions of the 20-30s there were a lot of Jews who knew Yiddish, and the education they received in the shtetl cheder did not allow them to draw a cross “for no reason.” Indeed, even today in secular Israeli schools and on Israeli calculators the plus sign - the cross - is devoid of the bottom line, so as not to inadvertently offend devout Jews.

How did the bird become homosexual? Cubans call homosexuals chicks – pajarito. In Puerto Rico they are called ducklings - pato, and in British English ducky is a very offensive name for homosexuals. The Jews had someone to learn from. One way or another, back in the 60s, Leo Rostin pointed out that feigele is an intimate word for inside Jewish gossip, “especially when they can be heard.” Jewish Feigele has not yet determined its shade - sometimes it is soft and affectionate, sometimes harshly mocking, as in the offer of one Tel Aviv magazine to the religious-nationalist extremist Moshe Feiglin to lead a gay pride parade. Feigele, like many other Yiddish words, is making its way into American pop culture. In the comedy Robin Hood: Man in Tights (1993), Rabbi Tuckerman (played by Mel Brooks) encounters Robin and his "Man in Tights" and remarks to the side: Feigeles?

The film was shown in theaters, but in the first television showing on the TBS channel they cut out the feigele, but left a much rougher smack. The American public, according to the editors, was not yet ready for the “bird.” However, already in the 2004 comedy Harold & Kumar go to White Castle, a Jewish friend of the heroes named Rosenberg teases them for their inextricable Feigele connection.

Feigl gained real fame in the gay community when the famous civil rights activist for sexual minorities from Seattle, John Singer, officially changed his name to Feigel Ben Miriam as a sign of protest. I don’t know whether he became the son of Miriam in honor of his own mother or in honor of the biblical prophetess Miriam, the sister of Moses, who is considered one of the symbols of women’s emancipation. Later, the game “Feigele Fight” was invented in gay bars in Washington, but the word cannot yet be considered an all-American, much less an international one.

Openly gay soloist Lorin Sklamberg of the klezmer ensemble Klezmatiks told the Village Voice that gays accept the word feigl simply because it doesn't sound as cruel or offensive as other names. "It's the kind of sweet word that's never said in a malicious way," Sklamberg said at the time. Gays were extremely attracted to the “outsider” status of Yiddish culture and felt comfortable in it. As always happens, there were those who considered it necessary to “give a rebuke.” Yiddishist professor Ruth Wiese of Harvard University wrote a policy article, “Yiddish: The Past, the Unfinished Present,” in which, without mentioning Sklamberg, she categorically stated: “Today, Jews (and non-Jews) championing the gay and lesbian cause, feminism and neo-Trotskyism, freely associate their feelings of injustice with the Yiddish cause. Thus they commit a double sin. By identifying themselves with Yiddish, they undermine the morality and continuity of Yiddishkeit culture, and by extolling the value of weakness, they retroactively slander the Jewish will to live and prosper.”

There is no doubt that shmok is more common in the American language. But in Russian they know the word pots better. “Shalom, veys mir, azohom vey, tzimis and, I apologize, pots - this is the little that has been preserved from this language, which was quite widespread at the beginning of the century,” wrote Rustam Arifjanov about Yiddish in the newspaper “Stolitsa” (1997.07.29). The Hebrew word potz is in no way related to the German word putsn (it is also in Yiddish putzn), meaning “to clean, to bring to shine.” It has no relation to the German Putzi, as little girls and small lapdogs are called (where the name of Winnie the Pooh bear presumably comes from). It has no relation to the English pussy, which means a kitten, as well as the not entirely decent, but widespread name for the female genital place, however, not as rude as cunt. It is believed that potz comes from the Latin puce. In English, this word is preserved in the medical name for what a circumcised Jewish person was deprived of until recently. Prepuce in English is called the foreskin. This word comes from the Latin praeputiun, i.e. prae – before putium. It is difficult to say how it got into the Hebrew language. Perhaps in those legendary times, when the Roman legions crushed rebellious Judea, or perhaps in the Middle Ages, when many Jews were engaged in a medical profession that required knowledge of Latin. In any case, in medieval colloquial Latin this word was pronounced “putium” and came from the same Indo-European root “to rise”, “to stand” as the English put - to put, plant, plant, stick in. According to another version, potz is associated with the dialectal Bavarian Putzi, which means everything small, and a little man, and a little friend.
However, the above interpretation does not exclude the hypothesis of Mikhail Libman. I will only note that the replacement and reduction of German sounds in Yiddish is a common thing. The German Bitter - butter became the Yiddish puter, and the German Pfeffer - the Jewish fefer. The change in gender meaning is also not a linguistic curiosity. For example, in Old Church Slavonic the word ud could be used for both female and male genitalia. A specialist in Germanic languages ​​could give a comprehensive answer here. The German word Fotze, meaning female genitalia, is cognate with the Scottish fud or the Old Norse fuð, but it may be derived from the same Indo-European root as the Latin putium. However, in the southern German dialects of Bavarian, Austrian and Swabian, Fotz also means mouth, as well as muzzle, and Fotze also means a slap in the face.

REVISION THREE: THE PARTY OF PUBLIC CYNISM AND OTHER POTS
It is interesting that in Yiddish a huge number of meanings come from pots and shmok and their derivatives, just like from similar words in Russian. There are also completely blasphemous plays on abbreviations of Hebrew words. Pots – prei tzedek “fruits of righteousness”, and this is also how they teased the Marxist Zionists from the Poael Zion party (the workers of Zion in Hebrew). The play on words has also passed into the Russian language. TV journalist Alexander Gordon announced the creation of the POC - Party of Public Cynicism. The Hebrew language also plays on the abbreviation shmok – shabes micro koidesh “holy Sabbath reading.” There is nothing unusual about mixing the obscene and the sacred. For example, the righteous woman tsadekes in Yiddish most often means a prostitute, an oil Shabbat lamp with two holes is a sexual allegory of a woman in the mysticism of Kabbalah, and a set Shabbat table is a common metaphor for sexual relations in the Talmud. The ancient teacher of the law, Rabbi Yochanan ben Dahabai, ominously warned that children are born lame because spouses “turn over the table,” i.e. making love with the woman on top. It must be said that the meeting of sages took into account the opinion of the venerable rabbi, but decided that sex is permitted in any position (Treatise Nedorin, 20a-b)...
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All rights reserved by Michael Dorfman (c) 2007
© 2007 by Michael Dorfman. All rights reserved

This dictionary is the first attempt in Yiddish lexicography to collect and describe good and evil wishes as a folklore genre, which is very widespread in Yiddish.

" Humanity, as soon as it began to talk, immediately began to decorate its speech with proverbs, sayings, jokes, juicy curses, figurative comparisons and other pleasures of the language. It is they who give our speech a genuine taste of life and often pass on from generation to generation more unique information than dry facts."

In the preface, Joseph Guri notes that, compared to curses in the Torah, evil wishes in Yiddish are mainly expressions of short-term, transitory anger and that “the Jews of Eastern Europe eased the soul not with obscene language, but with evil wishes, very picturesque and often humorous.” »

In addition, humanity almost immediately began to compile dictionaries and collect apt and sharp sayings. In 2006, two new products in this genre were released, each having its own specificity that was especially interesting to us.

The dictionaries of Dr. Joseph Guri (they are based on material from Bernstein’s collection of proverbs, Stuchkov’s thesaurus, general Yiddish dictionaries and works of Jewish writers) are compiled in such a way that every Yiddish curse and blessing, every proverb is translated word for word into three languages ​​at once: Hebrew, English and Russian. And besides this, their live spoken equivalents are given in all the specified languages. Subject indexes also make it easier for us to search. So I would even like to argue with the statement thatit is impossible to dance at two weddings with one pair of legs . If you use dictionaries correctly, you can get to all four.

Jewish folk wisdom says:It's better to ask ten times than to get lost once . In other words: if you talk, you can come to an agreement . For anyone who knows Yiddish even superficially, these dictionaries will certainly help enrich and embellish the spoken language. But what should everyone else do, the much more numerous representatives of our people who do not even speak the basics of Yiddish and clearly embody the proverbitlehe mishpokhe hot zikh ir gesrohe (euphemistic Russian equivalent: there's a black sheep in a family)? Our ancestors, for whom Yiddish was their native language, advised:caw with the crows like they do . Well, here we are. Well, a man, poor fellow, is just a man, and sometimes he’s not even that.Better a Jew without a beard than a beard without a Jew . Although it is said thatthe Jewish woman got nine measures of talkativeness out of ten , and she speaks two languages ​​- one before the wedding and the other after , but, as our ironic sages rightly noted,without fingers and a cookie you can’t show .

And yet, constantly studying Dr. Guri’s dictionaries (in addition to the two dictionaries under consideration, there is a dictionary of phraseological phrases and a dictionary of stable comparisons published in previous years), but without ever learning how to conduct a coherent conversation in this not entirely foreign language, I was convinced from my own experience:

Firstly, as long as your eyes are open, you have to hope ,
Secondly, A kosher penny is better than a non-kosher five-alt penny ,
and thirdly, even a shiksa working for a rabbi can decide halakhic issues And even a blind chicken sometimes finds a grain .

So Let's not throw a stone into the well from which we drank and maybe we'll get drunk more than once. You can find any number of applications for these treasure troves of folk wisdom.
First of all, you can swear stylishly and figuratively in a national manner. Try it, try it, becauseIt's only difficult the first time:
May you vomit your mother's milk!
May you be sick for your own pleasure!
So that people like you are sown thickly, but they rarely come up!
So that they write you not letters, but recipes!
May beets grow from your navel and urinate in borscht!
So that I can see you on one leg, and you can see me with one eye!
May you burn in a fire without insurance using your own firewood!
May the Almighty help you... like a dead bank!
May you be strong as iron! So that you don't bend!
Let your mouth stick out from behind!

I especially recommend focusing on the Bashevis-Singer gems:

May you enjoy your wedding meal and choke on your last bite!
May you become so rich that your widow’s new husband will never care about earning money!
May you become a bug in Petlyura’s mattress and die from his vile blood!
So that you are invited to the governor and you burp in his face!

Very figurative, and it doesn’t do much harm to anyone. No wonder it says:It's better to be cursed than pitied . And if you are especially delicate, then you can limit yourself to the lightest and softest message with a gastronomic overtone:oh, go eat some kraplach!
Although for 666 such beauties in the language of our ancestors there are only 199 good wishes, you can still change anger to mercy and flowerily, in rhyme, wish your neighbor all sorts of good things:
Der arbeishter zol gebn undz beserm un aykh greserm! (May the Almighty give us better, and more for you!)
And hemdele aroif, and hemdele arop, and gezund dir in cop! (Take off your shirt, put on your shirt, may your head be healthy!)

And if, thanks to such good wishes, happiness really comes, it is absolutely necessary to add:so that the first night in the grave would be no worse!
But a gifted person, prone to active creative rethinking of the reality given to us in sensations, will not limit himself to direct mechanical quoting of folk wisdom. Having absorbed their immortal and unique spirit, he will most likely continue the never-ending work of oral folk art. And it no longer matters in what language his inspiration is realized - the language changes, the accent remains.
It seems that the reviewer has already fallen into captivity of Yiddish folklore, and here is the first example of such amateur activity. You can continue in the same spirit almost indefinitely. Get a couple of impromptu curses:

So that rich challah is kneaded and baked in your belly, and only matzo comes out of your ass!
God grant you forty sons and forty daughters, so that all sons accept Islam, and all daughters are baptized and go to a monastery to atone for your sins!
Here is a freshly composed blessing:
May the Almighty send you a basket of absorption!
And here is a new proverb:
When the Lord caused the Pandemonium of Babel, Yiddish was the traffic controller and danced the freylekhs .

Now imagine what will happen if all the people continue this holy work! It’s not for nothing that it says:solidarity is a Jewish thing .
And then, you see, more basic knowledge will be added, becauseder appetit kumt mitn esn , in other words - show a Jew your finger and he'll want your whole hand .
For far zise reydeleh tsegeyen di meydeleh , I mean, girls melt from sweet words .
All that remains is to wholeheartedly congratulate ourselves on these excellent publications.
Wear for health and tear for health! Z. Zhukhovitsky (Zhukhovsky)

After all, Jews are incredibly poetic people. And Yiddish is extremely

capacious language.

Yes, yes, all this splendor is a curse on

Yiddish.

And in general: far zise reydeleh tsegeyen di meydeleh, that is,girls melt from sweet words.

" Yiddish transcription- Russian translation"

A bogegenish zolstn hobn mit a kozak- So that you meet a Cossack.

And Groys gesheft zolstu hobm mit shoyre; vos do host zol men ba dir nit fragn, un vos me fragt zolstu nit hobm- So that you have a big store, but so that they don’t buy goods that are there, but ask for those that don’t exist.

A Weiher balcony dir in cop. - So that the balcony falls on you.

Oysgerisn zolstn vern- So that you look pathetic.

A zisn toit zolstu hobm: a trok mit zuker zol dikh iberforn- I wish you a sweet death: so that a truck with sugar runs over you

A meshugenem zol man oysmekn un dikh arainshraybm- So that the crazy person is discharged, and they put you in his place

A fishkneidl zol dir shteln in halds- So that the fish meatball gets stuck in your throat

A shtroy dir in oig una a shpan dir in oyer, zolst nit visn vos frier aroystsutsien- A straw in your eye and a sliver of wood in your ear and so that you don’t know what to take out first

Azoy fil ritsn'eil zolstu oistrinken- So that you have to drink castor oil in large doses

Azoine zol men gedicht zeyen un sheeter zoln zey ufgeyn - So that people like you are sown thickly, but they rarely emerge

Ikh tsu dir af simkhes, du tsu mir af kules - So that I come to you on holidays, and you come to me on crutches

Ale tseyn zoln dir aroisfaln, nor einer zol dir blybm - af tsonveitik- So that all your teeth fall out, and one remains for toothache

Arumtrogn zol men dih af di hent- To be carried in their arms

Di fis zoln dir dinen nor af ramates- So that your legs serve only for rheumatism

Dine neshome zol araingain in a katz, un a hunt zol ir a bis tone- So that your soul moves into a cat, and it is bitten by a dog

Der malehamoves zol zikh in dir farlibm- So that the angel of death falls in love with you

Hundert heiser zolstu hobm, in yeder hois hundert cimern, in yeder cimer tswancik betn, un kadohes zol dikh warfn fun ein bet in der zweiter- So that you have a hundred houses, in each of them there are a hundred rooms, in each room there are twenty beds, and so that in a fever you are thrown from one bed to another

Vifl er du bist gegangen af ​​di fis, zolstu geyn af di hent - un di iberike zolstu zih sharn afn hintn- How many years have you walked on your feet - the same amount of time to walk on your hands, and the remaining time to crawl on your butt

Vern zol fun dir a pancake un fun im a Katz, er zol dikh ufesn un mit dir sikh dervargn - volt man fun aich beidn poter gevorn- So that you turn into a pancake, and he into a cat, and so that she eats you and choke on you - then they would get rid of both of you

Zol dain moil zih keinmol nit farmahn un dain hintn - keinmol zih nit efanen- So that your mouth never closes and your anus never opens

Zoln daine beiner zih brahn azay oft, vi di asares hadibres- May your bones break as often as the Ten Commandments are broken

Zoln daine zin zayn azoy gezunt un stark, az di armey-doktoyrim zoln zih freyen- So that your sons please army doctors with their health

Zol daine sonim oyslinken zeiere fis ven zey weln tansn af dain caver- May your enemies twist their legs while dancing on your grave

Zolst azoy farfoiln vern, az tsign, thoirn un hazeirim zoln sikh opzogn zu forn mit dir in ein fur- So that you are so rotten that goats, ferrets and pigs refuse to ride with you on the same cart

Zolst azoy shane radn, az nor di kets- So that only cats understand your eloquence.

Zolst wern a wanz in patlyures mattress un pagern fun zain hazerscher bluth- So that you become a bug in Petlyura’s mattress and die from his vile blood

Zolst wern azoy reich, az dain almones man zol zikh keinmol nit sorgn wegn parnose- May you become so rich that your widow’s new husband would never care about earning money

Zolst labm - ober nit lang- May you live, but not for long

Loifn zolstu in beis-khakise yede dry minutes oder yede dry hadoshim- So that you run to the toilet every three minutes or every three months

Me zol dikh einladn tsum gubernator af a sude, un du zolst im gebm a greptz in ponem- So that you are invited to the governor and you burp in his face

S’zol dir azoy drayen in boykh, me zol mainen az s’iz a katerinke- So that your stomach turns so much, as if a barrel organ is playing

S'zol dir dunern in boich, westu meinen az s'iz a homen-claper- So that your stomach rattles like a Purim rattle

Meshuge zolstn vern un arumloifn iber di gasn- May you go crazy and run around the streets

Kush a ber untern farteh- Kiss the bear under the apron